Night
fog descends from the surrounding hills and cloaks the lake with
ghost quilts. Even if he cannot see the night water, he smells
it, hears its waves moving rhythmically at the shore where the
village begins. He wades into the water, fog enclosing him like a
gentle nightmare. He treads the dark water, waving his hands as
if dispersing a cloud of moths. He drinks handfuls of the ebony
liquid. When he laughs, no one can hear him.

Sunlight
burns the fog off the water. He drinks his coffee slowly,
purposefully, watches the lake return to vision. He gets dressed.
It is late morning in Mexico.

He
has lived in many places and he knows this town on the lake is
but another stopping place, along a path he travels without
apparent reason. He knows the time is coming when he will pick up
and move again.

He
leaves his bungalow with the red tile roof and walks to the
bakery on the plaza. He exchanges greetings with the proprietor.
He buys sweet pastries. He eats them while sitting on a bench in
the plaza. Above him the cypress trees stir with a light wind
coming from the lake. To hear the trees is enough for him. He
doesn’t need to look at them because he has painted these
same trees many times. Now, several of the trees lie face down on
the floor of his bungalow. He think he no longer cares for the
trees because he no longer cares for his paintings. He is no
longer sure where one leaves and the other begins.

He
sits eating pastries, now and then waving to the village women
who pass by. Dark eyed, with oval faces and very shy, they pass
him beneath the trees.

The
women smile at him with the timidity of does, and not without
that same kind off sadness. He knows these women by name. His
hands have touched them all, caressed them mornings and
afternoons in small houses while their husbands were fishing out
on the lake.

The
women carry pitchers and are followed by children with laundry
and earthenware jars. he watches the procession and decides he is
thirsty. He gets up and walks beside a young woman who smiles at
him and then looks away. She stares straight ahead until they
reach the stream that runs through the center of the village.

The
stream is not large enough to be called a river. When the rainy
season fills the lake, the stream does not grow in width or
depth. He guesses the stream is fed by underground springs
because the water is so cool and clear. And although he has never
followed the stream to its source, he is certain that it comes
from the hills that rise beyond the village.

Those
hills are not extremely high, but they are steep, with cliffs to
one side. In small clearings near the summits are old and tiny
shrines. All he knows of those is what he sees when he is walking
down the cobblestone streets of the village and his eyes begin to
wander the hillsides.

Just
as soon, he looks away again. Not a religious man, he realizes
that the shrines will always remain distant to him. Or perhaps
they are something he cannot understand. In either case, he is
not bothered by this.

The
stream becomes a washing basin not far from the center of the
village. As he reaches it, still walking beside the woman, he
feels someone grab his shoulder. It is not a woman grabbing him
this time. When he turns to look, he sees the village mayor
smiling at him and laughing. Everyone in the village, even the
mayor, likes him. In fact, they have adopted him as one of their
own. This is because they believe he is an angel.

In
the beginning, when he first arrived in the village, he found all
this a comfort. But now, for a long time, he has been bored with
it. Just as he has become bored by his painting, which he feels
lacks vision. Before this, he had become bored with his family
and friends in Chicago. It was that initial boredom, or at least
the first he realized, that made him begin moving so.

He
thinks he knows why he has become bored with the village. It is a
different kind of boredom than those previous times. Here, living
in such a state of bliss and loved by all, he still believes that
something is missing. He has no idea what it is. But he has a
good idea what is wrong. He thinks it is the boredom of heaven.

From
the time he was old enough to consider such things, he decided
that he wanted no part of an afterlife. It wasn’t for him.
It only offered eternal damnation or happiness. Or worse,
everlasting nothingness. He imagines heaven to be a cool but
stifling place where people never stop smiling and never say
anything, a large place brimming with arranged mannequins.

He
does not feel this way about the women here in the village,
washing themselves and their children and doing laundry on flat
stones in the washing basin. Rather, he likes to think of each of
them as small, intricate jewels. Or, perhaps as stars passing
through a universe they cannot comprehend. If he feels anything
at all for the women, and he thinks he does, it is affection. And
often, longing.

Someone
is calling to him. He thinks it is Maria or Rosa, but he cannot
be sure because of the early morning glare on the water. Soon all
the women, some of them naked, call to him in a chorus of sorts.

“Angelico!
Angelico!” they cry out, trying to lure him into the water
with them.

And
he goes to them, just as he has every morning since coming to
their village. They undress him and take his white clothes to
wash. He sits nude on a flat rock in the washing basin while two
women shave him. One woman wades through the water to bring him a
corn muffin. Another woman brings fresh mango juice. He sits on
the rock and listens to the songs the women sing.

He
is happy, yes. But he knows that this feeling comes from the cool
water that begins in the hills and flows through his loins.

Then,
without warning, the dreaded feeling of boredom comes over him.
He is tired of being the village angel. They all believe he is an
angel. They believed it the first day he arrived there. He wore
white that day as well. It was because that color was cool and he
found the lake region warm. The women saw his white clothes, his
blue eyes and blonde hair and immediately took him for an angel
making a visitation. When he denied this, they had all laughed at
him. They knew better. They knew the truth.

Soon
after that he began sleeping with the women in the village.
Pretty, ugly, young or old, it didn’t matter. They all
awaited their turn. They would go to his bungalow without
speaking, remove their muslin dresses and climb into his bed.
Other times, he went to their homes and made love t them while
their children played on the floor beside the bed.

Late
in the day, the husbands returned from the lake and gifted him
with a prize catch or a bottle of liquor, anything to show their
appreciation. The husbands were thankful that an angel had smiled
on their village. They considered it good fortune, and believed
their catch from the lake had improved since the angel appeared.

He
stands so the women can dry him and comb his hair and beard.
Weeks before this he decided that this day would be his last in
the village. He will leave, and he will tell no one where he is
going. His life here, no matter how easy, is stifling to him. He
is bored, and he does not wish to grow old here watching the
children he has fathered grow up all around him.

He
leaves the village and the lake region at night, taking only
essential things. In his bungalow the cypress trees remain face
down. He knows the villagers will think he has returned to
heaven. But instead he plans to go to Veracruz. There, he hopes,
his vision will return.

Once
in Veracruz, he rents a two room apartment in the dock district.
His street is poor and dirty, and children play outside all hours
while their parents quarrel.

He
lives in one room and makes his studio in the other. But after
several weeks, he has not painted a thing. He walks into the
studio and is confronted by dirt and dust from the previous
tenant. No one befriends him, but he feels certain that the women
he passes in the streets are taken with him and his good looks.

A
few doors down lives a newly married woman named Gloria. She is
sixteen and her husband, like the other men in the district, is a
stevedore. He is away most of the time and Gloria, unused to
being a wife, spends most of her time outside visiting with the
other wives on the street.

The
angel begins the habit of passing her house frequently. At night,
he can see Gloria fighting with her husband. If the husband is
drunk, he beats Gloria. If the husband is away, the angel lingers
to catch a glimpse of Gloria when she passes a window.

When
he sees her in the market he smiles at her and she returns it.
This happens many times before they finally speak. One day, as
Gloria walks home, he offers to carry her bags. She doesn’t
say anything, but her eyes brighten. She hands the angel her
things.

In
a few minutes they are standing in Gloria’s kitchen. He
sets the packages down on the table and takes her in his arms. He
has not been with a woman since the village on the lake. Gloria
does not try to break free of him. The angel guides her slowly to
her bedroom, his arm around her waist.

It
is strange to him that Gloria never tells him that he looks like
an angel. In the village, everyone was always telling him this.
But in Veracruz it is not the same. All Gloria tells him is how
much she dislikes being married, how much she hates living with
her new husband.

The
angel goes to her house every afternoon for a month. Gloria says
that her husband
doesn’t suspect a thing. This seems odd to the angel, but
he says nothing. But he does wonder why the stevedore husband has
not yet brought him a gift of some kind.

The
women that Gloria meets in the street all compliment her on her
complexion. They all blush when they say this. She does not know
how they talk behind her back. She does not know what they tell
their husbands when they come home from the docks.

One
night Gloria’s husband comes home and they have a big
fight, even though he isn’t drunk. They eat dinner in
silence, and afterwards he pushes her roughly into the bedroom to
have sex. When they finish, the husband gets up and goes to the
kitchen. Gloria thinks this is unusual. Always after sex her
husband rolls over and goes to sleep.

Shortly
he comes back in the bedroom and stands beside the bed. He begins
screaming at Gloria, calling her a whore. Before she can say
anything she feels a strong blow to the side of her face. She
reels in pain and panic. She sees what he is doing.

Her
husband brings down a machete on her head over and over. Each
time she struggles to get up, to try to break free, he strikes
her down again. When he is finished, the house is very still.

The
angel is standing in his studio, looking for his vision, when he
hears voices in the street outside. There is a rap on the door.
When he opens it, he sees a group of men, maybe a dozen of them
and all stevedores, standing there. Without speaking, they push
their way inside. He immediately recognizes their leader, who
stands in the middle of the room with a bloody machete in his
hand. It is Gloria’s husband.

The
angel knows why they have come. He now realizes that Veracruz and
its people are very different from the village on the lake. He
stands still as they close in around him. He can smell

their
sweat and the liquor on their breath. Gloria’s husband
orders him to kneel, and when he does the husband puts the sharp
end of the machete to the angel’s lips and cuts deeply.
Blood flows freely.

The
other men in the room voice their approval. They are so close to
him that the room steams with body heat. kneeling, the angel
studies the husband’s face. He sees not hate as much as
power. The angel knows that power comes from the long knife and
from the other drunken men who have now begun chanting. They want
more blood.

The
husband holds the machete in one hand and unfastens his pants
with the other. He pulls out his member, already stiffening. He
gestures to the angel, telling him to take the thing in his
mouth. The angel raises his hand defensively. The husband sneers
at this, striking down with the machete so that two of the
angel’s fingers are sliced off. The other men cheer and
tighten the circle. The husband smiles as the angel’s
bloody lips enclose him.

When
he has satisfied the husband, two of the other men grab the angel
and pin his arms behind his back. He feels the long blade of the
machete plunge into his throat and begin a slow, circular motion.

The
pain is more than he can tolerate. When the machete is pulled
free, he can see his teeth and gums in pools of dark blood on the
dusty floor. The husband laughs, then stands back as the other
men move in to take their turns with the angel’s lips.

Each
time the angel passes out, then revive him again. It is much
later in the night when he realizes that they do not plan to kill
him outright.

It
is near dawn when they finally leave. They laugh among themselves
and do not bother to close the door. The angel collapses again on
the floor. Consciousness comes and goes like a black velvet tide.

Christopher
Woods is the author of a prose collection, Under a
Riverbed Sky. His play, Moonbirds, about doomed
census takers at work in an uninhabited desert country, was
produced in New York by Personal Space Theatrics. The Boredom
of Heaven is from an unpublished story collection, THE BEE
HARP. He lives in Texas.